For many people, waking up in the morning—or at other times of the day or night—can be a challenge. Alarm clocks are common and for many people are effective for rousing people from sleep and waking them up, typically by ringing a bell or programmed buzzer sound, by playing music or a radio station, or by turning on lights or a television. Yet some people are able to quickly and easily deactivate their alarms without fully waking, and then return to sleeping.
Depending on the type of alarm, this may mean hitting a physical or on-screen snooze button, or flipping a switch. With some alarms, that may only “snooze” the alarm, which will then re-activate in a small number of minutes, or that may turn the alarm off, either for the day, or permanently until it is re-set. As a result, people will wake up late, and likely arrive late to school, work, or other commitments. This can put the person behind schedule for the rest of the day, and often causes anxiety, stress, and embarrassment. Repeatedly pressing “snooze” or turning off an alarm also makes it hard for a person to be in a consistent sleep cycle, which can have negative implications for a person's health.
Some alarm clocks exist that are harder for a user to turn off than simply pressing a button. For instance, some require a person to take some action beyond hitting a switch to deactivate the alarm: Jetter, U.S. Pat. No. 4,352,171, requires use of a key; Jetter, U.S. Pat. No. 4,426,157, teaches an alarm clock where the user must press a switch for a period of time; Shay, U.S. Pat. No. 4,585,358, teaches an alarm clock where the user must shake the clock to deactivate the alarm; and Lin, U.S. Pat. No. 8,717,856, teaches an alarm clock where a user must touch a screen at more than one location to deactivate the alarm. But, all of those, and other, alarm clocks can be deactivated by a person while still in bed, and without reaching a waking state. For people with sleeping problems or difficulties getting up, an alarm clock must require a sufficient amount of brain or physical activity for the user to become fully awake. For these people, traditional alarm clocks often fail.
Other alarm clocks require that a user get out of bed and stand on a platform (e.g., Brown, U.S. Pat. No. 7,868,743)—and while a person can place any alarm clock farther from their bed, forcing them to get out of bed to shut it off, some people manage to get out of bed, quickly deactivate the alarm, and return to bed and sleep. Any alarm clock that requires an activity to deactivate the alarm, if the alarm clock could be brought back to the user's bed, can be deactivated by the user performing the activity from bed, even if the activity requires the activity over a non-trivial period of time, such as pressing multiple buttons in a sequence, or holding a switch for a period of time.
Finally, most alarm clocks are powered by electrical current and their alarms can be deactivated by unplugging them. While some are battery powered, the batteries are typically easy to remove, which will deactivate the alarm.
Accordingly, the problems with the prior art of alarm clocks include alarms that are easy to deactivate, alarms that do not require a user to get out of bed, alarms that do not require the user to stay out of bed while deactivating the alarm, alarm clocks that can be brought to a user's bed for deactivation, alarm clocks that can be deactivated by quickly unplugging them or by quickly removing the batteries, and alarms that require some effort to deactivate but can be deactivated quickly.